The Platform to build 8- to 10-story mixed-use building on Big Boy site

The Platform LLC plans to build a mixed-use development with 240 apartment units and 11,000 square feet of retail at East Jefferson Avenue and East Grand Boulevard in Detroit on the site of a former Big Boy restaurant. Demolition on the Big Boy building started Wednesday morning.

Detroit-based developer The Platform LLC plans to build an 8- to 10-story mixed-use structure on the site of a former Big Boy restaurant across from Belle Isle Park.

Demolition of the Big Boy building at 7033 E. Jefferson Ave. will start Wednesday morning, according to a news release. Construction will follow about a year later, in the fourth quarter of 2018.

The Platform expects a mid-2020 opening, it said in the release.

The $50 million development will sit at on the northwest corner of Jefferson and East Grand Boulevard, at the mouth of the Douglas MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle.

About 11,000 square feet of retail are expected to be housed on the ground floor below around 240 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Of those, 20 percent are to be affordable units.

The Big Boy restaurant closed in April after 50 years in business. Its owner sold the one-acre property to The Platform in March for an undisclosed amount. Over the summer, community development corporation GenesisHOPE and Eastern Market Corp. ran a farmer's market on the site.

For its latest development project, The Platform has hired Los Angeles-based design firm wHY and Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates as architects.

Renderings aren't yet available, as the project is still the preliminary stage.

Able Demolition in Shelby Township is doing the demolition work.

"Our vision for this major residential development is one that is both transformational and contextually sensitive," Dietrich Knoer, The Platform's president and CEO, said in the release. "We look forward to engaging with our neighbors and community stakeholders about future programming and what they'd like to see come to Islandview."

The east riverfront and nearby neighborhoods of West Village and Islandview continue to draw in substantial public and private investment aimed at bolstering safety, walkability and general economic development. The Platform's principals have discussed their intention to develop underserved areas of Detroit since the company's forming in 2016, Crain's has previously reported.

The Platform also has five parcels of land under control north of the Big Boy site on East Grand Boulevard. It will announce more details in early 2018, according to the release. Plans are to include renovating a former nursing home designed by well-known architect Louis Kamper and built in 1898, as well as rehabilitation of three other historic properties and new construction.